Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

Good to see someone on the left taking Karl Polanyi seriously. The  
three fictitious commodities created by capital-- nature, labor, and  
money, (and also the three vulnerabilities to the system), have  
expanded their range since the '80's, as Anderson says, moving in a  
direction diametrically opposed to Polanyi's hopes of reformist curbs  
on their inherently destructive tendencies. Polanyi predicted that  
any society which allows these three commodities to run amok would  
soon perish. Anderson is clear on this part of Polanyi's argument,  
which is taken from his excellent history titled "The Great  
Transformation". Anderson isolates each commodity and analyzes their  
current state of fortitude in the current conjuncture, and singles  
out money as the most vulnerable commodity at present, with labor  
being ever so plentiful and nature somewhere in the middle.

But rather than isolate each commodity separately and rank them in  
scorecard fashion, more interesting perhaps would be to see how they  
interrelate in reinforcing their respective strengths, or multiplying  
their respective weaknesses. Most interesting perhaps would be the  
negative dialectic between money and nature. I'm a bit more  
pessimistic than Anderson in terms of the ecological limits of the  
current globalist expansion, and I expect to see massive shifts in  
nature's ability to sustain the current set-up in the near and/or  
medium term. We're already beginning to see some of the effects.  
Whether or not Klein's "Shock " theory proves to be a successful  
elite strategy is difficult to predict, but I rather believe it will  
begin to implode as the shocks of nature increase in number and  
severity.

Politically speaking, Anderson may be correct with his analogy to the  
"concert of powers", with the USA as the primary hegemon, but the USA  
seems to have spent a lot of political capital in the last 5 years  
since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Pakistan is looking  
like much less of a "great anchor in the east" these days, and much  
more like a failed state which might need to be propped up by direct  
US military intervention. A fight between the US military  and the  
assorted elements in Pakistan in opposition to the US could turn out  
to be even more bloody than the debacle in Iraq. But that's just  
speculation. The situation is too fluid to make solid predictions,  
and as we all know, the US strategic planners thrive on chaotic  
situations. But the question remains: with a worn down and  
overextended military, could the country successfully fight such a  
difficult war?

Greg McDonald

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